Yeah: "tonnes." British. Does that make you just want to scoff and skip the whole article? Here. I'll give you the last paragraph:

Some scientists, the German chancellor's adviser, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber among them, say that if the cuts are not achieved, we will end up with a planet with a "carrying capacity" of just 1bn humans. If so, we need to start cutting back population now with methods that offer a humane choice – before it happens the hard way.

Oh, great. Thanks for the warning about cutting back "population" the hard way. Germany.

It's kind of funny how people who make these kind of statements always assume their kids are going to be "average" and that the average person does nothing more than produce waste. What if their kid was going to solve the world's problems and they decide not to have it?

Beyond that, if all the polluters have as many kids as they want and the people who say they really care about the environment don't, well, we can figure out who the future will belong to. So everyone might as well have as many children as they might otherwise want, environmental concerns be damned.

joewxman: What is it about Germans in government and their insaitiable need to find "solutions"?

You tell them something is a problem and they will will try to find a solution. The important part is making people think there is a problem. People being people will almost always try to do "something" even if doing something is worse than leaving it be.

Some scientists, Herr Dr. Prof. Schellhuber among them, are probably attracted to recycling Malthus in order to justify telling others how to live. It's not the science that leads to their conclusions, it's the conclusion that leads to the science.

This is a disease of the modern west. It takes a certain degree of self-hatred, lack of confidence, and pessimism to decide that the world is better off without your progeny in it. The worth of a single life, let alone your own genetic issue, cannot POSSIBLY be worth the cost of 11 tonnes of CO2 production a year. Nowhere is there any serious evidence that the carrying capacity of the Earth will be 1 billion humans by 2100 or even 2500, that figure (a convenient round number I'll note) is a projection of their fantasies.

This is what slow motion suicide looks like. When people don't have the balls to say "yeah, my life is worth the cost to the environment! and I think I can raise kids who will lead lives just as worthwhile!" they are declaring they believe they have no right to live. It's only an intellectual hop-skip-jump from there to deciding you don't have the right to displace animals from their habitat for your own living, to deciding that you don't have the right to affect the state of the universe in any way.

Well, if they want to commit suicide, good for them, just don't drag all us folks who believe that life is worth living down with you.

joewxman: the population time bomb has been around for centuries and they haven't got it right yet. We should have been long gone from this earth by now.

Under Malthusian conditions the human race wouldn't be wiped out, it would just live under low living standards. If productivity gains aren't greater than population growth then the average person's living standards wont get any better. Improvements in health result in increased poverty. Dr. Malthus accurately described most of human history and the conditions in many part of Africa today.

It's only the disruptive technologies of the last few centuries that have let people escape from the Malthusian trap. Hopefully they can escape the interventions of progressive governments and continue their good deeds.

So Bill Ayers and the climate change radicals (not those that are genuinely and soberly concerned about the enviroment, mind you) have a convergent final solution to each of their ends, hinted at by an advisor to the German chancellor. How....convenient.

Robin said...When people don't have the balls to say "yeah, my life is worth the cost to the environment! and I think I can raise kids who will lead lives just as worthwhile!" they are declaring they believe they have no right to live. It's only an intellectual hop-skip-jump from there to deciding you don't have the right to displace animals from their habitat for your own living, to deciding that you don't have the right to affect the state of the universe in any way.

Where it leads you first is to euthanize those who have "a poor quality of life", eg the retarded. the sick, elderly, the gypsies, polluters, Jews, and the capitalists. All the while jetting around the world to scenic places for AGW conferences. This time however, we will use CCS (Carbon capture and sequestration) technologies instead of crematoria (bad for the environment)

First, tonne is the international designation for a metric ton -- 1000 kg. It is scientific notation, not particularly British.

Secondly, to the point of the article. Preposterous. You could put every single person in the world into Massachusetts, evenly spaced with their arms spread, and they would be unable to touch each other.

Thirdly, devout enviros clearly wish to impose their religion on the world. Along with most of the far left, they're not concerned about having to live under a socialist tyranny ... because they expect to run it.

Wow... Michael Crichton was so right about the intent of the green movement.

I remember reading Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy and wasn’t terribly impressed with the premise: Mega rich pharmaceutical guy is really a radical environmentalist and creates a virus that will wipe out most of humanity except for his chosen flock who would then populate the planet. Basically it read more like a serious version of Moonraker and I was pretty disappointed in Clancy who always wrote very realistic techno-thrillers.

Now 10+ years later and listening to some of these environmentalists and their solutions, I’m recanting my opinion of the book and starting to wonder if Clancy is a prophet.

From http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/10/22/the-lighting-of-the-beacons/where Richard Fernandez is equating environmentalism as just another manifestation of socialism/communism, the new religion.

" The Roman Catholic Church is living through an extraordinary historical moment. It is facing two religious competitors. From one side, there is the religion which pretends to be a political movement — socialism/communism. From the other flank there is the political movement which pretends to be a religion — Islam. Both religions have massive amounts of money, heavy weaponry and great cultural power. "

Judging by the picture on his website, Alex Renton has already inflicted at least one eco-unfriendly, carbon-emitting cherub on Gaia. He also flies all over the world to research his articles for a newspaper that cuts down trees, turns them into paper using fossil fuels and moves them around the UK in trucks.

But since he's ever so worried about the planet, all that carbon doesn't really count. It's all absorbed by his admirable political views. Quite remarkable, really.

The author lies. The best thing you and I can do for the planet is to have children, love them by disciplining them, and educate them in the fear of the Lord. The mask has come off for any doubter out there. Environmentalism is not about pretty National Parks and clean air and clean water anymore. Environmentalism is now all about cleaning the planet by mass murder thru man made pandemics, famines, ethnic wars and suicide cults. It's time for the common sense of a Sarah Palin leadership style to dispell an ignorance of basic life affirming truths that is being furiously created by the enviro-wackos who say they are entitled to rule the world with a PR storm of lies.

I watched a report on the Jonestown cult's denuement on MSNBC last night. It included long video tape scenes of Jones ordering his brainwashed followers to accept drinking the medicine since his game was up due to people openly wishing to leave his cult. It was similar to watching our current President's performances surrendering America at home and all over the world as our medicine for not wanting him as our sole ruler/cult leader. Jim Jones won and cleaned up Jonestown quite well in a very short time. His attitude towards his captive people was the same as a certain unnamed German Cult Leader/Fuhrer facing the approach of Patton and Zhukov in 1945...he ordered suicide of the people "who had failed him".

How's this for timing, I just received an email from a friend, and him and his wife found out Saturday that #2 is on the way! Him, his wife, and their children can help pay for my Social Security. Don't get no better than that.

"It is certainly true that "fewer people equals a greener planet" is simplistic. In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today's standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis."

Ahh, so it's not just misanthropy, but it's also a "hate 'the rich'" mindset. But "rich" being defined as either "post-reproductive, middle-class white men", or just Australians and Americans. Or heck, if you read the article, anyone living in a developed nation.

If only this article were mere misanthropy, it could be blown off. But the author's trying to achieve a veneer of science with it. That's the real danger. What's ignored is that it's the "rich" (i.e. the educated classes in developed nations, not just the wealthy... Understand that misanthropic mindsets such as the author's basically include everyone from the lowest middle class on up as "rich", or alternately defines anyone living in a westernized, industrialized, developed nature. Either definition means you and I) who are the ones that create forward progress and adds to human knowledge in ways that advance mankind. Reducing pollution is one of those advancements; anyone wonder what the sewage problems a New York or Los Angeles would have if vehicles were still horse drawn? Or what living would be like if there were no public waterworks to handle sewage? It took a certain level of both development and education to achieve that. And this is precisely the level that this author is targeting.

The irreducible misconception the author of that article is laboring under is that "rich = higher carbon emissions". He misperceives that because he posits a static model of carbon emissions, and that presumption derives from the accurate yet misapplied perception that "rich = higher consumption". Of course it does. But consumption is only at this time tied to carbon emissions; it's not a natural, unavoidable consequence of such. The truth of the matter is that it's the rich nations who are developing means to reduce carbon emissions without reducing quality of life. Instead of lauding progress towards more efficient vehicles (cleaner diesel, hybrids, pure electronic, etc.), mindsets like that author's would rather have us hauled along in a cart behind ole Bessie the Mule. And wouldn't blink twice at the limitations such transport imposes on society (I'd love to have him explain how to maintain the current level of interstate and international commerce on a prior century's transportation technology. And how health care - dependent on such commerce for delivery of pharmecuticals and medical equipment - would progress as well).

Too many supposedly "progressive" thinkers are perpetually stuck in the "Noble Savage" mindset of humanity; 'If only human beings would revert to (provide-your-own-utopian-fantasy-here), then the world would be so much better'. But that mindset, too, is beset with ignorance of a dangerous kind, one that simultaneously believes it's a superior perspective and is ignorant of it's own ignorance. And this is why I distrust the nattering classes like this article's author on matters of importance: They approach it with less information than even the average man, yet lecture as if they have the right answers. Pomposity with obtuseness. That is the real danger of faux-intellectualism.

I love how the whole article is focused on the same old PC, Leftist principles. It's not the poor, who reproduce in high numbers, who need to be culled. It's the white middle-class, who produce all the carbon, see?

It's a hatred of prosperity (i.e., capitalism) that drives this movement now.

From the article: After all, based on current emissions and life expectancy, one less British child would permit some 30 women in sub-Saharan Africa to have a baby and still leave the planet a cleaner place.

Based on this logic, the second worst thing a westerner can do is adopt a child from a third world country. The third worst thing would be to let the child's family immigrate to the west. That would not only increase the child's emissions, but also it's life expectancy.

Renton ends up proposing a kind of reverse eugenics, if he only had the wits to know it. It's okay to have children so long as they stay impoverished and die young.

The commenters at the article are all over the immigration issue.

One Auric writes, sarcastically, "After all, if a baby in Africa is `good`, but a baby who comes to or is born in the UK is `bad`, they should not be allowed to move here."

The ironic and almost hilarious (if it weren't so dangerous) thing about these people who propose that we need to impose draconian measures upon the population to save mother earth etc.....is that they never dream that the measures will actually apply to THEM.

"Wait...when I said we all had to cut back and ride donkeys and eat beans.....I didn't mean ME!"

Their grand vision of reducing population, driving civilization back to some pastoral de-mechanized Eden, full of happy hardworking peasants, never includes themselves. They plan to be above it all in some ivory tower guiding the rest of us. They never envision that the hell they plan for the people, might include them too.

Imagine their surprise.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist;Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

The sad thing is that this blindingly & obviously stupid person will be treated as a sage by the people who want the state to control everything, and he will be defended by them when people point out the obvious hatred in these statements.

Too many supposedly "progressive" thinkers are perpetually stuck in the "Noble Savage" mindset of humanity; "If only human beings would revert to (provide-your-own-utopian-fantasy-here), then the world would be so much better."

Pol Pot provided his own utopian fantasy to Cambodia and millions of people died horrible deaths. When you are espousing a philosophy that is indistinguishable from that of Pol Pot you have a serious problem. That you appear unaware of the fact that your philosophy is indistinguishable from that of Pol Pot means that everyone around you has an even more serious problem.

The worst thing I could do to the planet would be to destabilize its orbit, so Earth plunges into the Sun. I'm not sure how to do that, yet, but rest assured I'm working on it here in my undersea laboratory under an atoll in the tropical Pacific. The problem is that my work is releasing a lot of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, and I'm feeling kinda guilty about that.

Gotta run, the latest monthly email from SPECTRE just came into my inbox.

The earth cannot support an infinite number of people. Therefore, at some point, some process will stop population growth. The larger the population is at that point, the more unpleasant that process is likely to be. We have not heard the last of "lebensraum."

I wonder if there is a causal relationship between the fact that the Euros are not reproducing enough to maintain their population and are in fact dying off and the decade long global cooling trend we are experiencing?

I just dug out from our third substantial snow dump since September and another is supposedly on the way for Tuesday. Where is my global warming, you loons?

I wonder if there is a causal relationship between the fact that the Euros are not reproducing enough to maintain their population and are in fact dying off and the decade long global cooling trend we are experiencing?

If you believe this, then don't have children. You will most likely be dead before the earth gets to the point that it can no longer sustain the population, and as you will not have children or grandchildren who will be in a position to suffer, then I suppose you wouldn't have much to worry about, would you?

What struck me about this article was how, with a few small changes, it could have been written (probably was written) in the late '60s when the ZPG craze was at its height. Those who were in college then will remember that ZPG had the same earnest appeal to the same demographic that is likely to find this latest version of the theme appealing.

In the '60s version, the ZPG shtick was based on the certainty that agriculture couldn't keep up with the demand for food; natural resources were about to run out; starvation, war, death and disease would soon be riding rampant; blah, blah, blah. And a lot of it was based on the folly of straight-line projections of current trends. Alas, dynamic systems don't fit well with such straight-line projections.

It's amazing that that lesson never quite sinks in with the worthies who push these solutions to hyped-up problems, which seem to be on their own unstoppable cycle of eternal regeneration.

Worst thing that has hit this world is European passion for their own sectarian future. Better they don't see a great need for their own future than see a great need for their own future that requires everyone else's future to feed it.

The trouble is their self-hate doesn't mean population loss in Europe, just population shift by people who prefer the early European way of thinking.

@ the author of that claptrap and speaking as the father of three with the fourth and last due this very Thursday…

@#$% YOU ALEX…YOU AND YOUR IGNORANT LIBERAL WHITE GUILT!!!

Only affluent societies can afford to produce such ridiculous ignorance in the first place, but should his point of view become mainstream, we will be out-populated by less “scrupulous” peoples within only a few generations.

By the by, the new carbon criminal should take his first breath (and thus pollute the Earth in his very next action) around 5pm central.

Wow, what a moron. Best thing we can do for the planet is not have HIS children! I make the following offer, the same one I make to almost everyone ranting that OTHERS must curb their procreation to suit the ranter:

Dear Mr. Renton,

Knowing that you wish to save the planet by preventing unwanted carbon emissions, I make you the following offer. If you are truly sincere in your beliefs, I will happily mail you a FREE plastic bag and a rubber band. You may use these to demonstrate your sincerity on overpopulation issues by placing the bag over your head, and sealing it there with the rubber band around your neck.

Please make arrangements to have the rubber band and plastic bag recycled.

If you believe this, then don't have children. You will most likely be dead before the earth gets to the point that it can no longer sustain the population, and as you will not have children or grandchildren who will be in a position to suffer, then I suppose you wouldn't have much to worry about, would you?

Madison man,"The worst thing I could do to the planet would be to destabilize its orbit, so Earth plunges into the Sun. I'm not sure how to do that, yet, ... The problem is that my work is releasing a lot of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere"

My father went partridge hunting in Bruce Wisconsin. Wood burning stove, electricity by a generator and outhouse. Meals made and packed by my mother. total costs of my dad's weekend was gas and turkey sandwiches by mom.

If we target anyone for Elimination For The Environment, it should be the vast portion of the human population that still uses wood and dung fires as their energy source. This energy is far more polluting than coal and nukes and oil.

If everyone stops having children, then the libtards can't make their favorite "stop thinking and just vote for it" appeal to emotion:

Didn't media matters get in a tizzy when Rush made a crack about someone along these lines? As if it was so out there that environmentalists would talk like this that Rush must really mean he wanted the guy dead vs. it being a parody of environmentalist arguments and logic?

The destruction of child bearing by women between ages 16 and 46 by a world wide PR campaign of peer approval for easy free abortions and peer disapproval of Breeders who see no fun with sexual promiscuity with strangers, will eliminate two thirds of the number of people alive on earth in 40 years. Genghis Khan only killed the men all over the old world and procreated happily with their women, and he has 16,000,000 direct descedants alive today. These UN propagandists are now worse than any plague we have ever seen before. By the way. the UN guys are right now getting a treaty signed thanks to Hillary and Barak to regulate all firearms in the USA.

I don't know if it will happen, but over population always leads to the worst of human conditions. Extreme levels of crime, infanticide, starvation, cannibalism and abandonment of all higher values and pursuits, beyond personal survival. It should not be taken lightly. Read about Europe in the 1300's. Or Africa more recently.

"The ideal world would be me, a dog and a small village of women a few days walk away."

Yeah, BUT... look at a population map. Most of the area of the world does not have a lot of people.

I.e., you could have a house and a hundred acres to yourself with a [very small] town 15 miles away... now... if you wanted it.... In most parts of the US even... had a grandpa who had a set up like that in Arkansas... except he had more than 100 acres.

Jason (the commenter) 6 amUnder Malthusian conditions the human race wouldn't be wiped out, it would just live under low living standards.

Isn't that The Plan with Crap & Tax? "Universal "Health" Something-or-other," redistribution of wealth (thank you JTP for giving us that quote), super taxing absolutely everyone and everything under the sun in America, the progressive destruction of industry, initiative, investments and business?

Leland @ 6:32 am Wow... Michael Crichton was so right about the intent of the green movement.

While the story is over the top fiction, (although looking around me these days, I am wondering ....)in State of Fear Crichton does a nice job on the crappy science of the environmental movement as a whole in his epilogue.

Hoosier Daddy @ 7:31 amNow 10+ years later and listening to some of these environmentalists and their solutions, I’m recanting my opinion of the book and starting to wonder if Clancy is a prophet

On 9/11 I was in a little country restaurant for breakfast with my then 84 year old mother and as we paid the bill I picked up the radio that was on, and the comments of other diners and heard that the towers were down becasue a plane had flown into it, a bomb had blown up at then Pentagaon and a plane was headed for Camp David or DC. Words out of my mouth: "This is right out of a Tom Clancy story."

Anthony at 10:07Actually, now that I live in London, I have been throwing the British spellings into most of my postal communications -- only one person has noticed.

Actually only one person has cared? ;-)

What I wonder is why people like Renton (and Schellhuber) get paper and ink to waste?

joewxman said... the population time bomb has been around for centuries and they haven't got it right yet. We should have been long gone from this earth by now.

The date the Malthus Trap hits us has been delayed by the invention of mechanized farming, the exploitation of finite resources to boost crop yield, then by the Green Revolution.It is important to note that the father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlung, was a deep believer in Maulthusian limits and repeatedly said that he hoped the Green Revolution had bought enough time to get population under control.Borlug was aware of all the "exciting high technology" possibilities...Global Warming was not on his list of issues with excess birthrate problems and finite resources. His were:

1. The Green Revolution rested on cheap energy to make cheap artificial fertilizer and permit wider mechanized farming and transport of food to cities.

2. It was dependent on finite arable land and finite water supply. In many areas of the world, it threatened species extermination by moving agriculture into marginal lands and whole ecosystems by people "mining" fossil water in acquifers faster than it was replaced.

3. He saw any shot at prosperity from "Green Revolution" promptly "eaten away" by excess breeding rates in the 3rd World's worst, most fecund countries. Along with economists and institutes, pre "global warming" - they determined that the global SUSTAINABLE carrying capacity of humans having a decent lifestyle was likely to be between 2 and 3 billion people. In some African,ME,Asian ecosystems 10 times less people may have to be the eventual human load to be sustainable.

However, Renton is wrong. The problem is not in Germany, Japan, China, or Seattle. The problem is in Muslim countries, East St Louis, the LA Barrio, Haiti, Central America, subsaharan Africa.

But along with Renton, the "pro-growth, pro-increased human numbers crowd" are also idiots. Saying the more mass immigration to America the better, the bigger the families in the Congo the better because GNP increases and "high tech miracles" will solve everything - is reckless and stupid.

Lets also say that Renton is doing one good thing...bringing up excess human population. Which has been a taboo subject amongst Global Warming people.

They have too much focused on per capita energy use and lavished praise on "noble 3rd world people" who may have 12 children and 100 grandchildren but each of those 100 grandchildren uses 8 times less carbon while living in a mud hut screwing and waiting for UN food from high carbon use countries.

Eurogreens know they have a shot at a stable ecosystem, but not if they become a dumping ground for a billion surplus "refugees" and "freedom-lovers!!" from Africa and Muslim lands.

And some American Greenies are finally beginning to note that individual worthy acts of "carbon conscious consumption" don't matter if America's collective carbon use goes up because our population is exploding from fecund immigrants, the immigrants high breeding spawn subsidized by the welfare state, and the most dysfunctional subsectors of US society being the biggest breeders.

We achieved a 20% reduction in per capita oil use from 1977 to 2009. All that gain was destroyed by US population going from 220 million to 308. We use more oil collectively, today, and are more dependent on foreign oil. Thanks to Teddy Kennedy, the NYC Jewish authors of the 1965 Immigration bill, the idiots of the Club for Growth and Catholic CHurch, and bringing up the rear - George Bush, John McCain..

Since Michael Crichton was brought up in this thread. Isn't Jurassic Park a perfect allegory for what happened to the markets? What they needed was a mathematician who understood that the best laid plans are not going to keep the forces of the market from finally adjusting to reality. We certainly have the chaos.

C-4...Killing off people sounds like an easy way to "balance the system" of life on earth,but like the game of musical chairs it only ends when every one dies or when the adults take back over again. I can drive 60 miles in any direction outside of Atlanta and see 98% vacant land with a few fields for hay and lots of pulp wood trees where 70 years ago that same land used to be farmed by large families. When bad people (Nazis and Moslems) finally quit planning how to kill people to steal their stuff, then life will flourish everywhere again. Look out because that could be happening soon.

Note the British ton is close to the metric tonne, but the metric tonne is 10% more than the U.S. ton. A hundredweight (cwt.) is 112 lbs. and is a British usage. 1 cwt. = 8 stone. A stone is 14 lbs. It is also a Britishism.

I swear that none of these people have ever spent a single day in a third world country.

Poverty isn't beautiful pastoral serenity. Poverty is *filthy*. It's billows of pitch black exhaust from trucks with bad engines and run-off water buffalo sh*t in the water supplies, malaria and dead children.

It's dying from stuff we don't even get sick from anymore, wondering if there will actually be food (meat) today or not, not having good schools or any schools at all, not having electricity to read the school books by after dark.

I'd condemn this guy to being a mother in Africa, but it would probably be more than he could handle just to wash his own clothing by hand.

"...and the most dysfunctional subsectors of US society being the biggest breeders."

Dysfunctional by what standards? Certainly by any rational, biological, standards they are far more "functional" than the warped examples of people who behave like animals trapped in zoos or raised without bonds to others of their own species who forget how or refuse to breed.

traditionalguy said... C-4...Killing off people sounds like an easy way to "balance the system" of life on earth,but like the game of musical chairs it only ends when every one dies or when the adults take back over again. I can drive 60 miles in any direction outside of Atlanta and see 98% vacant land with a few fields for hay and lots of pulp wood trees where 70 years ago that same land used to be farmed by large families

Funny you mention Atlanta. The region is now hit with water shortages. There is not enough for all the booming population of Atlanta metro wants and the water the river wildlife and estuarial wildlife needs.

And all the "vacant" land you mention is under some human commercial use. Could the US admit 300 million 3rd worlders and feed them by converting "unused" front lawns and forests into growing corn? Sure! But at current rates of immigration and dysfunctional people breeding too much, the US Census Bureau says we will have 720 million people in America by 2100.

Then your many vacant fields around Atlanta will be full of subsistance farmers, 40-60% unemployed young black and hispanic and Muslim men, and mosques.

You really want that future?

Long before global warming was added as a factor, economists and natural resource, water use experts said 2-3 billion was a sustainable global population.

C-4 ... Your facts about a water shortage in Atlanta are not true. The water is here and in our resevoirs that were last month taken from Atlanta's use in favor of oyster beds in Applachicola. This year the water is at high water marks anyway. Building new resevoirs in the mountain valleys north of Atlanta is now prohibitive due to land acquisition costs and flooding out people and species of whatever.(See the movie Deliverance about the building of these resevoirs in the early 1950s). So we will have fresh oysters UNTIL we change the recent environmental legal decision designed to stop people from living on the pristine earth north of Atlanta. The lands south of town have no such legal restriction since they built their own resevoirs.The RR's that came to North Georgia from Macon in 1851 built the tracks along the ridge line to save money on bridges, and therefore the natural water drainage divides at that ridge and the water drainage north of town is not the same as the one south of town. It is only a carefully created legal chess move that is suddenly being used to justify stopping people from living North of Atlanta. As to young black men and hispanics and muslim mosques and real Jews living North of Atlanta, none of that scares me like death cult apologists hiding behind pretend science/facts scares me.

I wonder if there is a causal relationship between the fact that the Euros are not reproducing enough to maintain their population and are in fact dying off and the decade long global cooling trend we are experiencing?

What cooling trend is that? It is dangerous to extrapolate from one year. Link

Madison Man...You are right that there is not a cooling trend. It is a cooling onslaught that is going down so fast that "It means nothing", since once is not a pattern. That is still proof that there is a very powerful cause for heating or its abscence (called cooling) other than miniscule CO2 levels that happen to be rising continually in the atmosphere.

I'm all for population control if you're talking about the cow population. Because all that farting of methane is one of the leading causes of our warming climate. And thus the bovine population has got to snuff it. So we should all become meat eaters until the cow population is no more.

See, we have to give up the meat to save the planet is his solution. though why giving up meat will fix the issue I'm not sure, considering unless we kill the cows they will continue to both fart methane and reproduce. Wouldn't it be better then to kill the cows so that they don't fart methane anymore? By the way Morrisey, meat may be be murder, but we all have to do our part to save the environment,so enjoy a delicious burger every now and then, knowing that by sacrificing that beautiful creature you are in fact moving us towards a cleaner world. Plus, hamburgers are delicious! In fact, all you vegetarians are selfish for not eating more meat. Finally, we have to have a talk with India. Even worse than our reliance on fossil fuels, is their refusal to deal with their cattle population. Let it go man, there is a cost to your reincarnation, and that cost is the methane spewed from the rectum of the cow you say is your reincarnated uncle. Cows must die.

Blake it is kind of stupid to take the position that of the list of concerns any civilization had, or any leader past or present may have had...that you are against doing anything about any concern that was also raised in Germany...

Simply because you dislike the German's "solutions".

But aside from you possibly being against animal cruelty laws because Hitler favored them, every civilization has fought social parasitism.

In America, the problem is even more acute because the parasites have the same voting rights as the actual contributors to society's productivity. Meaning if 51% of society wants taxes others pay so they can "get more free stuff" from Mayor Young or President Obama, the 49% or less who actually contribute are out of luck..It is in everyone's interest to reduce the number of parasites...and no, I don't mean by using Nazi solutions....

-------------------Tradguy - Your problem is that you see water for oysters as a momentary setback...and as Atlanta continues to grow and take in immigrants...the oysters, other estuarial creatures must lose out to people's needs. No, because the wetlands are under Fed control, and they will not be destroyed by assent of the American people to simply convenience too many people chasing too little water. Be it in Southern Georgia, Southern California, or SW Nevada.

Before that happens, you will have more local water restrictions, more gridlock, and other quality of life issues. Academics are now calling for meat-eating to be restricted..so less CO2 is greated and we can ship more food to hungry, exploding 3rd World populations..

As for large masses of jobless unskilled people - you might not be worried about them eyeing your wallet to see how much more they can get from you directly or from the taxes they vote on to force you to pay..But you should be.

Madison man - What cooling trend is that? It is dangerous to extrapolate from one year.

Madison man is correct. Even if it is a decade of cooling.

Too many in the denial, "club for growth" camp take that 10-year cooling trend to show that it proves there is no global warming, that there is no need to alter our habits or guzzling all the coal and oil we can find. And the world is fine with 18 billion people in 2100 and the US with 720 million (more than China had in 1950).

The deniers either cling to (1)Its all a lie; (2)Jesus will give us all we need; (3)Miracle exciting new high technology will solve all problems related to too many people chasing too few resources creating too much pollution with too few farms and jobs to go around.

Glabal warming is a future, non-urgent but very important threat as man's numbers have begun changing Earth's atmosphere.

Before severe effects from global warming happen though, we are looking at a mass species extinction time, war and famine over water supplies insufficient to support even today's numbers as millenia-old acquifers not replenished are "mined out". And energy and mineral resource shortages that may collapse nations and economies below what is needed for human subsistence.

C-4... The damn oysters are the only parasites mentioned in your entire precis of Mein Kampf. Georgia is a very conservative State and Atlanta has no city tax. Everybody in Atlanta works hard at producing Atlanta's crop primary which is not seasonal...it is called money. We even beat the Olympic Aristocrats at there own game and made money on that. Those Olympics have lead to a flow of emigrants bringing their money here with them from all over the world. And there was more water flooding northern Atlanta this summer than in recorded history. We only hope those parasitic Florida oysters all washed out to sea.

We've got something like 7 billion people on the planet and for some people here, apparently, that's not near enough. They must love the traffic in Los Angeles or the fact that if you want to climb Mt. Whitney (the highest peak in the continental United States) you have to apply to a lottery which takes place one day in February each year. There's no need to kill anyone (as some here have suggested) to control population. The best, fastest and most effective way by far to reduce CO2 is to have fewer children.

Of course no liberal or leftist ever pushes zero-population-growth. The reason is clear. Their real goal isn't to save the environment. It's to gain control of the economy (and the people) by stressing the supposed planetary imperative of controlling CO2. Well, if you really want to save the planet start wearing condoms, quit paying unmarried teens to have babies, eliminate tax deductions for children.

If we ever run out of people (fat chance) we can always start paying bonuses for babies again.

"The deniers either cling to (1)Its all a lie; (2)Jesus will give us all we need; (3)Miracle exciting new high technology will solve all problems related to too many people chasing too few resources creating too much pollution with too few farms and jobs to go around."

The "deniers" cling to History.

The "deniers" cling to the indisputable fact that population growth isn't just not exponential, it's not mathematically linear either.

The "deniers" cling to the fact that over and over and over we see nations or people groups drop to negative fertility rates, usually in correlation to economic development.

The population alarmists, like a couple of those now in the Obama administration and like the occasional nut-bag academic proposing sterilization agents secretly added to the water of developed countries, are enamored of their own excessive bravery for daring to suggest the unsuggestible. It makes them feel smart and lofty and as if they are daring to speak the truth in the face of likely persecution.

And they are almost always uniformly ridiculously wrong about any number of elements of their theory... that reducing the population of technologically advanced nations would do what they envision, for example, or any possible Historical evidence about human behavior when faced with disaster and death.

One of my favorites was an idiot from some junior college in Texas lovingly considering the potential benefit of an 80% human die off due to bird flu. And where does anyone get contraceptives when civilization collapses? And how many generations of women having 6 and 8 and 10 and 16 children does it take to restore the previous population?

People have fewer children voluntarily than they ever had before in the History of the World and thinking that *more* of the situation that led to this will probably lead to *more* limitation of family sizes and possibly even to more widely spread negative fertility rates is *denial*?

Great Britain has about 12x the population density of the US, and they manage to grow enough food to feed everyone. The back of my envelope says the US needs to add about 3.3 billion people, or about half the current population of the world, before we have the "carrying capacity" problems the Brits have today. Which are nonexistent.

That's also assuming a complete lack of technical innovation and political will. No nuclear-powered distillation plants for clean water or floating farms or new crop varieties engineered to produce more calories per hectare.

This Soylent Green stuff is just nonsense from innumerate people. The planet can support many times its current population. Whether or not that's aesthetically desirable is a separate question, and probably the most relevant question to the Greens anyway.

Titus, if it makes you feel better, you're not paying a dime to educate *my* children. I'll take care of it! :-)

Charlotte Mason, who lived in the late 19th, early 20th century, wrote after WWI that the roots of that conflict went back decades to the beginnigs of the German educational philosophy. That philosophy laid the groundwork for German behavior in WWI, and she foresaw (in the early 20's) that if not changed it would lead to further problems. Well, may I just point out that even today that underlying educational philosophy in Germany is still the same? (Hence also the hatred for homeschooling there, I might add.)

"It's only the disruptive technologies of the last few centuries that have let people escape from the Malthusian trap." (Jason 10/26/09 6:00 AM)

That is worded as if those technologies were "lucky breaks". No they were NOT. They were the intellectual product of free-thinking individuals, pursuing economic success, by providing new values in the Western culture.

The more economic 'stress' there is, the more creative entrepreneurs are likely to be. That is, the more capitalists are likely to find brilliant economic measures.